Forty Days and Forty Nights
by Kaitsurinu
Summary: [HeeroDuo] [Almost Plotless Fluff] Oneshot. And the Lord said down unto Heero, Build an ark.


Forty Days and Forty Nights

After dinner, he had just gone out to the beach. If he hadn't at least washed off his dishes and put them away, I might have followed him out, waving a hand towel at him to get his ungrateful behind back in the kitchen. I might have gone with him, but I was still finishing the dinner I had made and I just watched him step out and watched the screen door slam shut behind him chewing a mouthful of steak.

I wondered if he might be going out there to pick up the fishing rod again, just to rub me the wrong way. Lately, he'd gotten into the habit of catching and releasing the fish he'd caught with the crummy old hand-me-down rod found in the back of the shed and I'd begun to miss not having to cook. It also meant I didn't have to go up to the grocery store in the mornings to buy food for dinner.

But he may have known that, and done it _because_ of that. Eventually, I came to understand, through the sheepish smiles and shrugs he'd give me upon returning with no catch, that he couldn't stand to kill the creatures he caught anymore. Which puzzled me for a while, seeing as we were both under Preventers' contract until we were unfit to perform our duties. Off-duty leave only lasted for three months at a time. And our golden years seemed to be eons ahead of us, teasing and tempting us. We were already old men in comparison to the normal twenty-two year old male, but we'd have to wait for our bodies to catch up to our seasoned minds. Our experiences in two wars had given Heero certain disgust for bloodshed of any kind, though I'm sure that it had been there in the first place and nutured by his terrorist days. Only years ago he had been a tragic king of the battlefield, and now a few glassy-eyed fish heads could send him into the house gagging at the smell.

So, that should have eliminated the prospect of fishing from my mind, and hinted me toward something else that was mulling in his mind as he stood at the edge of the water, looking out onto the bay and the not-so distant ocean to which it led. But that's all in hindsight. I stood from the small table at which we ate every night, listening to the radio and the insects buzzing at the screens, and washed off my plates. It was six o'clock. The baseball game was on, and I had an appointment with a leaky faucet that had been acting stubborn since last week. I'd been procrastinating, and I was afraid that Heero'd walk back in covered in mosquito bites and be in a cranky mood and tell me to fix the damn thing. So I didn't even notice the time pass until it was half-past and I'd finally wrestled the bathroom sink into submission.

I came out into the living room after I'd washed the grease off my fingers. It really wasn't more than a hallway in the shape of an elbow pipe filled with a bookcase, a cramped and buckling sofa, and some rugs over the old wood floor that ran between the kitchen and the bathroom and bedrooms. It served as a place to sit when it rained outside, for we spent as little time in the house as we could, preferring the open spaces and clean air of the outdoors. And, after spending time in a house like this, you started to form a fear of enclosed spaces.

The radio still crackled on, and my least favorite of the two teams playing was winning. I switched it to the classics station and caught a little of "Beautiful Loser" before I noticed that Heero was still standing out where the waves licked the sand, doing absolutely nothing. I blinked out the window and was about to open my mouth and tell him I'd finally fixed the water in the bathroom sink. He didn't like brushing his teeth in the kitchen; he claimed he found some thick, black six-legged bug crawling through the bristles one morning big enough to function as a doorstop. I thought he'd be happy to hear it, but that image of him just standing there, looking over the water while the skies were growing dim and mystical with twilight, took the words from my mouth. I decided to join him.

I strolled back into the kitchen and opened up the fridge. There were a few drinks left stored down in the crisper. I was surprised Heero hadn't already gotten wise to the vegetables I'd used to conceal them and dumped them out into the woods while I was in town during the day. He really hated the stuff. But he'd usually respect my wishes if I'd bought the bottles with my own money. Hell, as far as I was concerned, I should have picked up drinking as soon as I knew I was getting in a war and had a better chance of being bit in half by a shark than surviving. Dying young's no way to go if you haven't even had one drink.

I picked one up and popped the cap off under the edge of the counter. Before the door closed, I also picked up a half-eaten chocolate bar wrapped in tin foil. You might not be able to drag Heero into a pub, but you sure as hell could be sure to see him burning cash in the candy aisle.

I left the kitchen light on and pushed the screen door open. He didn't move more than glance over his shoulder at me for a second, then he went back to busily staring off into the horizon.

Sitting down on the front step, I put my drink down on the cement next to my hip while I unwrapped the tin foil from the half-consumed Hershey's bar and held it out. "You wan' some?"

"No, not right now," he answered. He seemed to be half a world away when he answered and I was skeptical and a little confused.

"You sure? It's chocolate. It's your _favorite_," I teased him, wagging the bar toward him then beneath my nose and inhaling the sweet smell of milk chocolate. "And I'm not gonna bring it to you, pal—you're gonna have to come here and get it."

"That's alright, Duo. You can have it." Still the same distant tone.

It's a victory for me, since I rarely had the time to taste the sweets in the house before Heero got his paws on them. Then they were doomed. I shrugged and took a bite.

It was a gorgeous night, but all of them were here at the rim of the ocean, flanked by the thick pine forest cushioning the whole township of Avignon. There was a thin, wooded line at the edge of the horizon that was the hook-like curve of the bay reaching out for the endless ocean, and a cliff bluff on the opposite side that burned with every sunset. And tonight, it blazed. The creamy orange flame also set on to the waves, turning our sleepy little shanty at the heart of the bay into the best damn view this side of L-1. That alone was enough to content me at that moment, but the fact that the war was dead and buried and Heero stood at the edge of the water, very much alive, made it doubly sweet.

He wore his favorite pair of jeans, and they were unraveling slowly but steadily at his knees and patched with dirt and a little bit of grease. They were worn, torn, and generally broken in by the long days spent at the seaside in Avignon, but there was no other pair that Heero would wear so willingly, and every time the damn things needed to be washed—which was every day, really—he'd take over the laundry for the day just to tend them. It bought me an extra hour in the hammock, so I usually didn't gripe. I think the shirt he wore was an old one of mine, but I couldn't be sure in fading light.

While I cradled my cold beer in one hand and offhandedly munched on the chocolate, I noticed that his hair was getting awfully long. Definitely no where near the length of mine, but enough to look strange on my old war comrade. In a very good way, mind you. I'd never seen him with any length far below his ear, and as soon as we'd come to the ocean house for the second time, he'd let it grow recklessly. And so it went for a while, the two of us sitting in the quiet orchestra of nature, listening, and watching the ocean. The sun was setting, glowing vividly behind and through the clouds. The kitchen light was on behind me, painting the setting in a nostalgic glow, casting quaint and rustic light on Heero's figure, and I could hear the rushing hiss of the ocean sucking back and forth from the sand. His shoes sat near the steps and his toes curled in the damp earth.

I was perfectly happy to die where I sat if I had to, but I guess it was just not enough for Heero, for he randomly announced, "I want to build a boat."

And when I kept on, contentedly sipping my drink and taking a bite of chocolate in-between, not really believing he said it, he said it again.

"I want to build a boat."

In that moment, I was beginning to see a certain similarity between my partner and the wizened image of the biblical builder of the ark. I felt a little inwardly disappointed—I had been thoroughly enjoying Heero's longer, thicker brown locks, now just curling up beneath his ears and showing the natural wave it possessed, and now I would forever associate it with a pair of engorged African animals waddling up a plank into a wooden boat.

I pursed my lips at him slightly. "You're serious," I said quietly. The ocean's lullaby of a hiss masked the sound of the chocolate wrapper crinkling as I turned the candy bar around in my fingers cautiously. When Heero lifted an eyebrow at me, I rolled my eyes and hunched my shoulders. "Right. Of course you're serious. Your name's listed under _serious_'in the dictionary."

He took little notice of my display. "I'm starting tomorrow."

"Resolute, are we?" I drawled, bringing the bottle to my lips.

"I am," Heero answered resolutely.

Once the swig had gone down, I noticed that sunlight was also sinking further and further out to sea, and the fine tendrils of night—the darkening shadows, the gentle hum and hiss of life lingering in the trees, the sleepy churn of the ocean tide—were coming to beautiful fruition as they did every sunset. Heero stood at the water's edge, eyeing me.

"If you don't want to help," he began softly, "then I'm not going to force you to."

"Well," I immediately responded, "what makes you think you won't _need _me to build your ark? Noah had a faithful wife and family, you know."

Heero simply looked at me as if he knew something I didn't, smiling only in his eyes.

The first cricket of the night sounded somewhere in the long, wispy grasses growing at the edge of the sand. I made a theatrical production out of simply putting my bottle down by my ankle, sitting unevenly on the crooked bottom cement step, and crossing my arms, resting my elbows on my knees, and making a fish-like face at him. "You got any nails?" I asked finally, puckering my lips in suspicion.

"No," he answered. His voice was soft and pleased, as if it were an inconsequential, simple detail.

"What about lumber?"

"No."

Now I was finding myself partially exasperated. "How about a _plan_?"

"I have you."

The smile seeped into his mouth, and in the same blissfully lazy moment, the sun drifted out of sight, and the surface of the lake turned a hazy shade of violet and silver, thousands of moving lights, just behind Heero. Now, I didn't see any of that. The simplicity and brightness in Heero's expression, sweeter than any chocolate to be had, made everything else around him three shades duller.

He remained there, not moving—only smiling—until he turned away to gaze at the water with that same softly radiant smile. "We'll start working tomorrow."

He still looked like he knew something that I didn't, yet.

Fin


End file.
